Games of chance have been enjoyed by people for thousands of years and have enjoyed widespread popularity in recent times. Many people enjoy playing a wide variety of games that they have not played before. Playing new games adds to the excitement of this recreational activity.
One popular game of chance that has long been enjoyed by many players is the slot machine. Conventionally, a slot machine is configured for a player to input a standard denomination of currency and then to permit the player to activate a lever or push a button which causes a plurality of reels to spin and ultimately stop to display a random combination of some form of indicia, for example, numbers or symbols. If this display contains one of a preselected plurality of winning combinations, the machine releases money into a payout chute or onto a credit meter for the player. For example, if a player initially wagered two coins of a national currency and that player won a high payout, that player may receive fifty coins of the same denomination in return.
As a safeguard against tampering with machines and in order to keep some order in a gaming establishment such as a casino, it has also been suggested that when a player wins a large jackpot at a slot machine, instead of receiving a very large number of coins from the machine, the machine prints out a check or a ticket to the player which is redeemable at a cashier window at that casino. While this method of making relatively large payments offers some advantages, it also suffers several disadvantages. One distinct disadvantage is that this method of payment deprives the player of the immediate gratification of collecting the winnings. Secondly, the player must leave the machine in order to collect the winnings. Those familiar with the gaming industry will appreciate that it is in the gaming establishment's best interest to allow a player to play continuously at a gaming device without interruption since the overall profit to the gaming establishment is proportional to the amount of play that such gaming devices receive. If a player is required to leave a specific slot machine in order to collect a payout at another location, the player may not return to play the game.
It would therefore be desirable to provide a player with an attractive prize without requiring the player to leave the gaming device.
It would also be desirable to provide players with novel forms of prizes having inherent value which will be attractive to a wide variety of players and therefore encourage players to play the game.
Other disadvantages of conventional gaming devices is that they simply provide payouts in the form of a national currency, a credit or a check in that national currency. Therefore, when the player's excursion to the gaming establishment is over, the player will typically do a calculation of how much money was started with compared to how much money the player leaves with and thereby determine whether the trip was "successful". If a player leaves with less money than the player started with, the player may deem the otherwise entertaining recreational activity to have been unrewarding. It is therefore desirable to provide players with another form of prize that has inherent value in a form other than a national currency which can provide a player with a feeling of "success" without depriving the gaming establishment of a profit.
It is also desirable to provide such prizes in a form which will serve as a reminder to the player and other people seeing the prize, of the player's enjoyable experience.